A cone-beam computed tomography study of orthodontic apical root resorption

A selection of abstracts of clinically relevant papers from other journals. The abstracts on this page have been chosen and edited by John R. Radford.

Abstract

Generally, increased tooth movement is associated with increased root resorption.

Main

Yu J-H, Shu K-W et al. J Dent Sci 2013; 8: 74–79

Conventional planar films have been used to identify root resorption in the mesio-distal plane only. It may also not be possible to quantify accurately the extent of resorption because of the distortion associated with these two dimensional films. Cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) can be used to detect resorption in all planes. Nevertheless in this study, despite the investigators using CBCT, only apical resorption was measured. This was quantified for each tooth in the upper anterior sextant of 8 patients in their early twenties, before and 7 months after non-extraction orthodontic treatment. The average amount of root resorption of lateral incisor teeth, central incisor teeth and canine teeth were 0.4 mm, 0.3 mm and 0.2 mm respectively. The investigators also found that greater tooth movement was associated with increased root resorption, although this was not consistent for all patients.